Early numbers show enrollment up at Palomar College

SAN MARCOS —— An aggressive campaign to continue the upward
enrollment trend at Palomar College is paying dividends based on
early data for the fall semester, college officials said
Wednesday.

Enrollment is up more than 4 percent compared with the same time
in August 2004, according to Herman Lee, Palomar's director of
enrollment services.

Lee attributed the enrollment increase to several factors,
including the stabilization of tuition costs, a greater variety of
classes, more high school students taking enrichment classes, and
efforts by Palomar to convince previous students to return to the
college this fall.

"We sent reminder postcards to 20,000 students who had taken
classes before," said Lee, noting that the practice is new and goes
beyond sending a course catalog to previous students. "We also made
phone calls to previous students who had received financial
aid."

Michelle Nelson, a member of the Palomar College governing
board, applauded the new campaign and said it was prompted by a
slump in enrollment numbers that college officials noticed a few
weeks ago.

"Not as many students were re-enrolling this fall, so we had to
make extra calls and contacts," Nelson said.

With school set to open Monday, nearly 19,500 students have
signed up to take at least one class at Palomar's main campus in
San Marcos or one of its eight satellite campuses. Based on the
total number of course units those students have decided to take,
Palomar will have 7,576 full-time-equivalent students, Lee
said.

The number of full-time-equivalent students at this time in
August 2004 was 7,267, which translates to an increase of 4.25
percent this year.

Such growth is on top of a 3.4 percent increase in enrollment
during the 2004-05 school year, which allowed Palomar to barely
meet its annual state growth target.

That enrollment success yielded $2.1 million in additional
revenue for the college, and if the school meets its 5.35 percent
growth target this year, it will receive an additional $3 million
budget boost, according to college President Robert Deegan.

Nancy Chadwick, president of the governing board, said Deegan's
arrival in January and the new faculty contract forged in March
have created a new atmosphere at Palomar that has helped stimulate
enrollment growth.

"The approach with our new president and faculty contract is to
make sure that enough class sections, particularly the ones
students need most, are available," said Chadwick. "In the past,
the faculty was unhappy and they wouldn't make this happen."

Chadwick said faculty members were now more willing to teach
classes at different sites and that they also agreed in the
contract to teach slightly larger classes.

Julie Ivey, co-president of the Palomar Faculty Federation, said
faculty members were taking pride and satisfaction in the recent
enrollment growth at the college.

"The faculty agreeing to take in extra students allowed this
type of thing to happen," she said.

Lee said the larger classes and additional courses were key
factors in the new growth. He said significantly fewer classes are
full this fall. The school is offering more online classes this
fall, Lee said, and the number of high school students taking
classes has spiked.

However, Lee cautioned that the early numbers were far from a
guarantee that the school will meet its annual enrollment target
next summer, which is called a "growth cap." Many students may drop
classes in the first few days or weeks this fall, and enrollment in
the spring semester is typically lower, he said.

But these numbers are still extremely good news because they are
a comparison against the exact same time period of uncertainty last
year, Lee said.